The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
